TITANIC-TITANIC.com | Titanic's Fitting Out

Once the launch
was over, Titanic
was towed to Harland
& Wolff's fitting out basin. Here, the mainly empty vessel would be
turned into the incredible floating palace she would eventually become. It
was now the turn of highly skilled craftsmen to create the lavish interiors,
and an army of joiners, painters, plumbers, electricians, tilers, carpet-layers
and designers went to work to create the legendary cabins and rooms. And of
course, these people couldn't work without supplies and equipment. Hundreds
and thousands of items kept arriving at Harland
& Wolff, arriving by the ship, train, and road. Manufacturers who
were supplying goods for the Titanic
made quite sure that their potential customers knew about it, as seen in this
beautiful advertisement for Vinolia Otto Toilet Soap here on the left. After
all, what better advertisement for any company than to announce that your
product is being used on the finest ship in the world, and maybe by some of
the richest people in the world too?

A 300 page 'builders specification book' was used as a guide to furnish and
decorate the ship, and this guide comprised 15 sections, such as 'General
Design and Description', 13 pages, 'Castings, Decks, Lockers, Doors and Bulwarks',
22 pages, 'Ventilation and Heating', 31 pages, 'Plumber Work, Etc.', 16 pages,
and 'Cementing and Painting', 10 pages.

Whilst all of this interior work was taking place, Titanic's exterior was also being completed. Because of the limited space underneath
the Arrol Gantry,
much of the upper deck-work could only be completed once the ship had been
launched. The last of the upper superstructures, such as the officers' quarters,
the gymnasium, the bridge
and the wheelhouse, and the raised roof over the First Class Dining Saloon
were added, along with the four huge funnels,
the two masts, the lifeboats and their davits, ventilation units, cargo cranes, etc. The ship's three huge propellers would also be fitted during the coming months.

The picture here on the right depicts Titanic's
sprawling boat deck during fitting out, with Harland
& Wolff's massive floating crane in attendance. (Capable of lifting
250 tons, the crane was bought second-hand from Germany.) Noticable in the
picture at the very bottom is the curved base of the front of the wheelhouse
(A), and also it is possible to see the large opening for funnel
No. 1 (B). The raised roof over the First Class Dining Saloon is clearly visible
(C), and the forward-facing window in the navigation room is visible too (D)
as well as the forward-facing window in the Chief Officer's cabin, (E).

Sometime during the summer of 1911, Bruce Ismay proposed that Titanic'smaiden voyage would
depart on March 20th, 1912. The White Star Line
began to issue timetables, posters
and stationary advertising the March sailing. But events were about to overtake
these arrangements, and not in a minor way. Only three months after her own
maiden voyage, and under the command of Captain
E.J. Smith, Olympic was involved in
a collision with a Royal Navy cruiser, HMS Hawke. Although nobody was
injured, and Olympic remained afloat,
the damage was severe enough to warrant a return to Harland
and Wolff, as they were the only company with a dry-dock large enough
to accomodate her, and on 4th October, Titanic
was moved from this dry-dock to allow her sister in. It took almost two weeks
to patch Olympic well enough for
the trip to Belfast, and she arrived back at her birthplace on October 6th.
Workers who were engaged on Titanic
were transferred to Olympic, and Titanic'smaiden voyage would
have to be re-arranged. Five days after Olympic
arrived at Belfast, an announcement in the London Times gave April 10th, 1912
as the new date for Titanic'smaiden voyage.

On November 30th, 1911, with her repairs now completed, Olympic
left Belfast, and immediately returned to Southampton
to begin her 5th voyage to New York. Titanic
was returned to the Thompson Graving Dock and work continued at full speed
to have her ready for her April departure. In January, Titanic's
16 lifeboats, built 'in-house'
by Harland
and Wolff, were fitted to the boat deck. They were supported by a new
design of davit which cleverly allowed two or three lifeboats
to use the same pair of davits, allowing more lifeboats to be carried. Harland
and Wolff designer Alexander Carlisle had proposed the fitting of 64 lifeboats,
but his later designs provided for only half that amount, 32 boats. But after
consultation between White
Star and Harland
and Wolff, that number was halved again, to a mere 16 boats, plus the
four Englehardt collapsibles.

With just over four weeks to go before her maiden
voyage, Titanic
underwent a fairly major design change, which is quite unusual for a ship almost ready for
service. Passengers traveling on Olympic
had complained that whilst walking on the forward part of the promenade decks,
they were quite often sprayed with water thrown up from the bow. White
Star reponded to this by replacing the open windows in the affected area
with sliding glass windows, which provided full protection from the elements,
but could still be cranked open when required. The two pictures here on the
left depict this conversion quite clearly, the upper picture showing Titanic
with the original open window design, shared by Olympic.
The lower picture shows Titanic
again, but the promenade deck windows are of the new design, enabling her
First Class passengers
to remain dry, and also making her much easier to identify from a distance.

Titanic's April 1st
sea trials were looming
fast, and the ship was practically complete now. Various members of the crew
began to arrive throughout March, many of them engineers who had to familiarise
themselves with the systems and machinery in the vast new ship. First Officer Charles
Lightoller arrived in Belfast on March 20th, whilst the junior officers
- Pitman,
Boxhall,
Lowe
and Moody
- all arrived on March 27th, with orders to report to Chief Officer William
Murdoch, who was already aboard.